Some 35 per cent of recent immigrants to Ireland say they have been insulted, threatened or harassed in public because of their ethnic or national origin, according to a new report. Ruadhán Mac Cormaic reports.
In the first large-scale nationally representative study of its kind, to be published today, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) measured the subjective experience of discrimination and racism among asylum seekers and work permit holders in a range of different social situations.
It found that black Africans experienced considerably more discrimination than other groups studied, with 53 per cent of people in this category reporting some form of harassment on the street or on public transport during the past year.
Insults or other forms of harassment at work were the second most common form of discrimination, with 32 per cent of work permit holders across all groups having reported it, while some 17.6 per cent of those with contact with the immigration services said that they were badly treated or received poor service - the highest incidence of institutional discrimination recorded.
The research, which is part of a larger study on migrants' experiences of racism and xenophobia in 12 EU member states, found that experience of racism tended to be lower in Ireland than in other countries, particularly southern European states.
However, the authors cautioned against drawing conclusions from comparative data, pointing out that Ireland's migrants are very recently arrived compared to other European countries. "It is an interesting question whether racism will increase or decrease as migrant communities become more established and increase as a proportion of the overall population," they write.
Ireland's experience of migration has also coincided with rapid economic growth and an unprecedented increase in employment, the report notes, creating a favourable context for the reception of migrants.
Philip O'Connell of the ESRI, one of the report's authors, said there were some "alarm calls" to be taken from the new figures.
"Employment and street-level racism and discrimination are the ones which we must be most concerned about, and within that, black Africans are the ones most likely to report having experienced racism," he said.
"There is a problem there, and that points to where policy interventions should be targeted."